Stop the presses, hold the front page, get out the bunting and deck the halls with boughs of holly. According to those who know about such matters, cricket is the new rock'n'roll.

Such advanced theorists as John Major and Norman Tebbit might have recognised the thwack of leather upon willow as imbuing some noble English characteristics, but such antiquated beliefs are no more. Cricket is cool; cricket is trendy; cricket is the new rock'n'roll.

However, before the old duffers at the MCC start uttering such banal phrases as "rebranding" and "untapped markets", be warned, the catalyst for cricket's new sobriquet is Razorlight frontman Johnny Borrell. Oh, and the drummer from boy band ankle biters McFly.

Over the last couple of years, the never knowingly understated Borrell has become something of an unofficial flag waver for a new generation of cricket fans. Apparently he loves the "subtle shifts" in test cricket (too many jokes, not enough space). He was even snapped with Hollywood girlfriend Kirsten Dunst in tow at Lord's earlier this summer.

And yet, cricket is hardly the first activity to be saddled with the cliched "new rock'n'roll" tag. Ever since Elvis first gyrated his hips people have been stumbling over themselves to proclaim this thing or that thing "the new rock'n'roll".

The emergence of "edgy" chefs such as Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver meant that cooking was next in the hot seat, and since then the likes of gardening, hairdressing, reality TV, history, classical music, knitting, Romania, decorating, hotels, capitalism, genomics (no, me neither) and hamster racing (I kid you not) have all had claims made upon their behalf. Who knows, as we speak, maybe some bright spark in the NME's marketing department is about to anoint rock'n'roll as the new rock'n'roll.

Inevitably, if such genteel pursuits as gardening and knitting are rock'n'roll this all rather begs the question how rock'n'roll rock'n'roll is. And the answer, of course, is not much. It might have been revolutionary once, but that was fifty years ago. To borrow hackneyed counterculture terminology, The Man has long since eroded rock'n'roll's more radical edges.

Now that's not to deny that it's not still fun, exciting, life-changing and lots of other doing words, but rock'n'roll no longer denotes the qualities it once did. We need a new rock'n'roll. Any suggestions?